Straight Talk in a Crooked World

It’s Okay. She’s Muslim.

So your worthless wife or girlfriend wants to get a divorce/break up/move on/have guy friends/wants to work outside the home/didn’t heat your dinner up enough/disapproved of you wanting to bring other women in the relationship/looked at you funny/didn’t iron your pants/wants to go to school/didn’t feel like having sex. And you killed her. Because she deserved it.

That is exactly the mentality that untold numbers of Muslim men have, and if you criticize this hateful, evil, egotistical, misogynistic practice, you’re branded an Islamophobe. Do I have your attention? Note that I did not say that if you’re a Muslim, you believe this. What I am saying is that so-called honor killings are a worldwide problem and a growing concern here in America due to some Muslims.

The silence surrounding issues affecting Muslim women, particularly in America, is astounding. As Muslim author and advocate Raheel Raza has pointed out, we’ve become too politically correct to call this horrifying criminal behavior what it is. In the meantime, these women continue to be slaughtered by legalistic, paranoid, controlling thugs who believe their religion gives them the right to abuse women and violently take their lives.

It seems like every week I’m hearing about another act of honor violence happening in the U.S. The media doesn’t use that term often, but when an entitled Muslim male beats or slays a female for an alleged wrongdoing, that could be what it is. A quick search of Creeping Sharia, a site that tracks the influence of Islamic religious law on Western society, brings up the following headlines:

You can also search the web for phrases like “honor killings” and “honor killings America” if you’d like to peruse a more random selection of articles.

From Fox News. Amina and Sarah Said, shot to death by their father in 2008 in Irving, Texas. He was aided by their mother.

Where is the ongoing outcry from the feminists and LGBT community? Why isn’t the Democratic party, who believes they protect women’s rights more than the Republicans, loudly condemning violence against Islamic women? Where are the civil liberties advocates and churches who see themselves as leaders on human rights issues? I’ve seen this topic discussed more on conservative, Christian, and Jewish websites than anywhere else.

Frankly, why are we importing more and more people from cultures that practice violence against women and have no regard for Western law or morals into our country? In most other countries and cultures on this earth, women do not have the same protections they have in Western society, yet we increase the risk of violence against all American women by letting more of these abusers through our gates.

This week it was reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had something to do with shutting down screenings of the gutsy film Honor Diaries. From Fox News:

“Honor Diaries” is a recently-released documentary profiling nine Muslim women and their horrific experiences in Islamic societies living with practices such as female genital mutilation, honor violence, honor killings and forced marriage at young ages.

How can any interest group protest the profiling of violent and grotesque practices against women?

CAIR started a Twitter campaign a few days ago against the film, calling it ‘Islamophobic,’ the term groups such as CAIR use not to mean prejudice or fear against the religion, but a fabricated term used to denote anything unflattering to Islam.

It’s a tactic used by CAIR and others to successfully and often indefinitely quiet any criticism of Islam, even when it’s shining light upon the practice of honor violence and depriving young women of education, two central themes in the film.

And most of the time it works. We see it in cases such as this one, where individuals like those organizing this film screening become fearful at the thought of offending a minority group. Because offending others is very anti-American; but then again, isn’t stifling free speech?

Who is being offended when we are talking about mutilation and women setting themselves on fire to escape marriage before puberty?

From http://jimunro.blogspot.com/. Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her estranged husband, CEO of the Islamic Bridges TV network, near Buffalo, New York in 2009. She had recently obtained a protection order against him.

The real question here– which others have asked as well– is why isn’t CAIR focusing on condemning this barbaric butchery instead of criticizing the amazing women who spoke out in this film? When was the last time anyone heard an American Muslim group speaking out against violence towards women? Given CAIR’s ties to terrorist organizations, I’m not surprised. While they claim to advance civil liberties and promote peaceful awareness of Islam, millions of people know there’s more to their agenda than that, and obviously it doesn’t include helping the Honor Diaries.

As the Fox News article said above, there are multiple horrors facing women in Islamic cultures, including subcultures here in America. Did you know that tens of thousands of American girls are at risk of female genital mutilation? According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation:

The United States has longstanding laws against the practice of FGM on U.S. soil and in January, passed a federal law against sending young women outside the country for so-called “vacation cutting”. However, girls living in America increasingly are at risk of the procedure both at home and abroad, according to research by Sanctuary for Families.

The New York City-based non-profit organisation, which specialises in gender-based violence, said up to 200,000 girls and women in the United States are at risk of FGM and that the number is growing.

“People in the United States think that FGM only happens to people outside of the United States, but in all actuality, people here all over the country have been through FGM,” said Jaha, 23, formerly from Gambia and now a survivor and advocate against FGM.

“Kids that were born in this country are taken back home every summer and undergo this procedure,” she was quoted as saying in the report.

Do you know what female genital mutilation is? Here’s a very honest definition from the AHA Foundation website:

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is any procedure involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs and is often performed on girls between the ages of 4 and 14 to ensure their virginity until marriage. FGM has no foundation in Islamic scripture or law; however, in the West it is mainly practiced in Muslim communities.

This “procedure” is intended to keep girls and women in line and lessen or eliminate their sexual pleasure. There is no medical justification for doing this and it can be extremely painful and have complications. It is often performed without anesthesia. I’ve seen photos of the screaming pain on little girls’ faces while a male doctor is carving them up and the sometimes primitive tools used.

Again, from the AHA Foundation:

Is female genital mutilation harmful?

Yes. The World Health Organization reports that FGM has no health benefits and can cause a number of health problems. Immediately following the procedure, girls are at risk for severe pain, shock, bleeding, bacterial infection, and injury to nearby tissue. In the long term, girls and women who have suffered this procedure are at risk for recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections, cysts, infertility, and complications during intercourse and childbirth.

Could you imagine how it would go over if millions of women worldwide decided that men needed to be tamed by removing their penises or testicles? Men would start wearing protective steel cups removable only by combination lock and carry clubs. Yet most of our planet’s population remains silent while women of all ages are forced to have their body parts sliced off.

From the New York Daily News. In St. Louis, Missouri in 1989, Tina Isa was stabbed to death by her father. Her mother held her down. (Her mother died in prison in May of 2014; you can read how Tina’s murder was caught on tape here, http://wp.me/pbU4v-h5G.)

Honor violence– so maybe, if you’re a Muslim man who sees women as property, you don’t want to get in trouble for killing the woman who you perceive as disrespecting you. So you beat her severely. You psychologically terrorize her. You isolate her at home and control her every move. You’re not an honorable Muslim. You’re a petty, cowardly abuser who needs to grow up and develop an emotional IQ. In my country, if you abuse or kill a woman, expect to go jail or even face a death sentence. How dare you bring your bigoted, wife-beating ways to my country.

Unfortunately, violence against women is the norm in a majority of the world’s population. It should not become the norm in a civilized, educated country like the U.S., but as long as Americans stay quiet about it, it will gradually become the norm. We’ve already seen a change in our culture here in the Northwest as Mexicans, Russians, and Southeast Asians, among others, have moved here over the past 30 years.

Did I say all immigrants are like this? No I did not, and I love my friends from those regions. Many are hardworking, loving, and very American family people. They moved here and assimilated while maintaining some of their cultural traditions, just not the ones designed to harm and control other human beings. Having worked in law enforcement, though, it is undeniable that sometimes these cultures bring domestic violence and intolerance with them and then expect to keep practicing that here. We’re seeing this more and more in Muslim communities.

As one Asian immigrant said, when confronted by a cop coworker of mine after beating up his “woman,” “In our culture she cannot get away with this.” Hey buddy, I have news for you. This is my culture. Violence against women does not belong anywhere in the world, especially on my home turf. NOT IN MY HOUSE. If you expect to import illegal and harmful practices to America and get away with it, you need to go back to where you came from. And I hope the authorities there nail you to the wall.

Speaking out against cultures or groups that practice violence against women is not racist, phobic, hateful, or biased. Violence against women is not going to stop until we call it out for what it is where it is. ANYONE who thinks it’s okay to beat, mutilate, rape, belittle, terrorize, or murder other people should be held accountable. But in a society where we’re immediately labeled a whatever-phobe for speaking the truth or shining a spotlight on a particular segment in our population, we’ve been conditioned to do the very thing abusers want us to do: walk on eggshells so we don’t offend anyone.

Forget that. We have enough domestic violence in the U.S. as it is and we don’t talk about that nearly enough. We deny it’s happening or don’t want to get involved even though one in four women– and many men– you will interact with today are victims. And because we are so desensitized to violence in relationships already, we turn a blind eye to the destruction of Muslim women as if it’s just something that happens, like potholes developing in the street.

From Marie Claire. Noor al-Malecki was run over by her father in Peoria, Arizona in 2009. She was in a coma for weeks before she died.

I have a lot of empathy for Muslim women. Sometimes it’s not just their boyfriend or husband who hurts or kills them, but their own father, or his or her whole family. Muslim women can be up against a whole gang of people who want to shame them or end their existence. Having stood up to an abusive cop, I understand that. You’re taking on a system, a culture, even dark spiritual forces, not just a person. In my case I’ve not only had to deal with his threats and violence, but harassment from his family and coworkers. This played into my leaving law enforcement as well. They live to punish you and make you pay for what, in their twisted minds, you did to him.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is. It doesn’t matter that you’re just trying to stay alive, get out, and go on with your life. What matters is their own reality and perceptions, even when there’s no factual basis for it. They believe that you, the woman, are somehow below their innocent and entitled son/father/brother/friend and should be punished for your transgressions. No matter what actually happened, you, the woman, are to blame.They project all of their hatred and dysfunction and everything that’s wrong with them onto you.

In many cases, nothing would please them more than for you to die, especially if you died in what looks like suicide or an accident. In Muslim honor violence and killings, the acts involved are generally not so veiled. It’s as if these men and their accomplices don’t even care about the consequences as long as the wretched woman will just bleed or lie lifeless on the ground. Abusing, raping, or slaughtering them makes them feel powerful and in control.

CBN reported on the rise of Muslim honor violence in 2012. They cited these examples

• A Canadian woman was strangled by her father because she refused to wear a headscarf.

• An Italian had her throat slit by her dad while she was held down by three uncles.

Walking slightly ahead of Noor, Khalaf glanced to her side and saw a gray jeep bearing down on them. Faleh was in the driver’s seat. Khalaf saw him turn the wheel sharply and head toward her and Noor. She made eye contact with him, throwing her hands in the air and yelling, “Stop!”

Faleh kept going, plowing into the women and speeding off. Khalaf never felt the impact. She awoke on the ground to strangers huddled over her.

Khalaf couldn’t see Noor, gasping for breath as blood gushed out of her mouth. The jeep had rolled over her. She suffered a head injury and multiple facial fractures, among other injuries. She never regained consciousness.

By running down his own daughter, Faleh al-Maleki believed he was restoring honor to his family. His daughter had dared defy his wishes for an arranged marriage and had put distance between herself and their control issues. This is what these abusers and murderers believe they are doing, as this article says, cleansing their family’s reputation. Removing evil from among them. Punishing the insolent. Showing the woman who’s boss. Reminding the woman she’s your property. Cutting short a God-given life in what you believe is a justifiable act.

To believe that doing this to another human being is rational and allowable is wicked and delusional. It shows your family, peers, neighbors, and coworkers–even the whole world– how little and narrow-minded you are. Do you really think that when your time comes and you stand before God He will smile upon your violence?

One last point I’d like to touch on in defense of Muslim women is the issue of forced marriage. In the U.S. we’ve already imported some cultures who prey on underage girls and force women to work as sex slaves. Again, let’s not play dumb and deny that some immigrant groups are engaged in this more than others. Let’s not deny that droves of Americans are engaged in it as well and profit from it.

Would you, at age 14, want to be promised to some sleazy 40 year-old in another country? Would you want your childhood to end years early when you’re raped by a pedophile or hebephile who can’t wait to violate a child bride and is adamant that it’s his right? Of course not. But this is happening to American girls as well, and they are punished when they try to escape these arrangements.

One in every five girls in the developing world is married by the age of 18. One in nine marries before they reach the age of 15. In countries like Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea and the Central African Republic (CAR), the rate of early and forced marriage is 60 per cent and over. Child brides are particularly prevalent in South Asia (46 per cent) and in sub-Saharan Africa (38 per cent).

Countries with the highest rates of early and forced marriage in Europe include Georgia (17 per cent), Turkey (14 per cent) and Ukraine (10 per cent). At least 10 per cent of adolescents marry before the age of 18 in Britain and France.

From Flavourmag. Tools used in female genital mutilation.

Do not assume that the girls this is happening to are brainwashed drones forced to hide their beauty under burkas. That is a stereotype that needs to stop. This is happening to everyday Americans whose parents believe they can use their daughters to uphold agreements with other families or conduct business transactions. They might think it’s necessary to do this to maintain tradition or honor their religion. Regardless of their daughters’ wills, they treat them as property to be used for their own purposes. This practice allows millions of girls and women to be raped and reinforces the belief that a woman is property to be used or abused as a man desires.

American Muslim women– you have rights and a man can’t take those away from you. As an American you can drive a car, wear jeans, hold a job, go to college, marry who you wish, listen to loud music, hang out with friends, and go swimming with everyone else. If you’ve come here from another country, the man’s right to control you ceased when you stepped across that border. As an American you have a right to seek help from the authorities to stop the abuse and you have the right to leave an abusive relationship.

If you are in such a relationship, seek help whether you are a citizen or not. Make a safety plan and work secretly with local advocates or the police to stay alive. Discuss concerns about deportation and any consequences you might face. As I always say, document the abuse so that if he tries to hurt or kill you, he will not get away with it. I often recommend the use of a tool called the Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit (EAA) because it’s designed to be used in court even if you’re not present. See the Document the Abuse website for details.

We should not tolerate abuse and murder, and we should not be scared to speak out against the abuse and murder of Muslim women justified by religion or culture. I have no interest in being politically correct when people are being brutally murdered all over the world in the name of this ideology. I have no desire to downplay the cultural violence that plagues Muslims in my own country. Do not ask me to accommodate or be tolerant of a system of belief that makes women second class citizens and takes away my freedoms.

As an American Christian I stand firm in my belief that domestic violence needs to be eradicated and its perpetrators punished to the fullest extent of the law. This revolting philosophy that you can bring your savage, sexist ways into my nation and beat and kill women who displease you needs to be driven to extinction. We have enough domestic violence here already, and how sickening that Muslim women move here expecting a better life and then are crushed by the same forces that enslaved them in their country of origin.

Jessie Bender, who was 13 when she fled her home in Hesperia, California to escape a forced marriage to a man in Pakistan. Her Islamic convert mother and Pakistani immigrant stepfather arranged for her “sale.” They originally told the media she’d been abducted.

Americans, we must stand against this. We must spread awareness of these evils and not mince words when we speak out against them. If you are attacked as being anti-Muslim when you’re anti-violence, consider the source. Honor killings, honor violence, female genital mutilation, and forced marriage have absolutely no place in our society.

If we turn a blind eye because it’s not happening in our circles or casually accept that it’s something that just “happens” to Muslim women, we are allowing this to become yet another ugly cultural norm. We are holding the doors open for more bigotry, more sexual assaults, more abuse, more murders. Women’s rights have come too far in this country for us to allow them to be set back a thousand years by this inhumanity.

To preserve our society, to preserve our civilization, to preserve our freedoms, we must not allow or accept these crimes. They come from hell and they belong in hell, not in free countries like the United States of America. Abusers, good luck explaining to your Creator why you spent the life He gave you trying to subjugate his beautiful daughters rather than loving and protecting them as He intended you to do. He won’t be interested in your excuses.

Thank you. I’m far more impressed with the women who put together the Honor Diaries film, which is basically a round table discussion of the horrors they’ve endured and how to prevent them. They’re Muslim and they’re speaking out against evils in that culture.